The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Media devices consume media content from a variety of different media sources. The number and variety of these sources is ever increasing. A content distribution system may provide one or more sources of media content. Content distribution systems include traditional broadcast, cable, or satellite television distribution systems, as well as Internet-based distribution systems for downloading or streaming content. While certain content distribution systems provide at least some free sources of content, usually supplemented by promotional materials, many content distribution systems require that client devices have a subscription or license to acquire some or all of the sources of the content that they distribute. This requirement impacts the interactions between the client devices and the content distribution systems, requiring a variety of technical operations such as credential exchange and authentication, access control lookups, secure transactions, decryption and encryption of content and/or keys, and so forth, in order to ensure that client devices have the appropriate subscriptions or licenses.
As content distribution systems proliferate, and as the subscription-based and/or license-based distribution services those systems provide continue to evolve, the process of managing a media device's access to the content that the user, or users, of the device wish to view becomes increasingly complex. Moreover, the rules, restrictions, pricing models, content availability, and other characteristics of these subscription-based or license-based content sources are constantly changing, as the operators of the content distribution system experiment with their systems. These changes often end up both confusing consumers and having unintended effects on the efficacy of a content distribution system. Both the distribution and consumption of content is therefore often inefficient, based on an imperfect understanding of ever-shifting objectives.